Sea Ice News Volume 3 #1 – The “Arctic Institute” pwns itself

UPDATE: 3/5 8:30PM PST There’s a hilarious backstory on the sockpuppetry that went on yesterday from the founder of The Arctic Institute – read my comment on it here

It is that time again where attention turns to Arctic Sea Ice because it is approaching maximum extent. There’s really only two periods each year that garner intense interest, and that is the times of maximum and minimum extent. We are fast approaching maximum.

Only two problems, when I queried him, Johnson stated he was referencing NORSEX SSM/I from the WUWT Sea Ice page, not NSIDC. And, since the Arctic Institute apparently doesn’t know how NSIDC graphs work, they’ve pwned themselves in the process of making their put-down counter claims. Have a look:

The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, interdisciplinary, and independent source for information and in-depth analysis about the developments in the High North. The Institute was founded in 2011 and currently aims to bring together scholars and researchers to build a growing stock of knowledge and expertise on the Arctic region. In contrast to existing platforms for Arctic affairs, The Arctic Institute is not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the Arctic states.

…would know that NSDIC graphs are on a five day average (and thus don’t reflect recent updates right away), and that daily graphs such as the NORSEX SSMI showed that there had been a dramatic surge in the last couple of days. I guess we know now that “authoritative” is just really their own self serving world view, and not based in actual evidence.

By itself, this peak doesn’t mean all that much. We saw a similar jump near the max in 2009 and 2010, and in 2010 the extent hugged the normal center line for several weeks. In the end though, most people are interested in the minimum in September, and since that event is so dependent on the short term vagaries of wind and weather, having a normal extent at maximum doesn’t guarantee a higher or even normal minimum in September.

One other thing I noted about the Arctic Institute is that they really didn’t show the current extent mapped out, so here it is:

I note that folks like the Arctic Institute just don’t like showing picture of reality, especially at maximum, since their entire existence is predicated on the Serreze “arctic death spiral” mentality and picture like this tend to make people wonder why there’s still ice in the Arctic when they have been told repeatedly it is disappearing at “unprecedented rates”.

So as to prevent the on cue wailing and gnashing of teeth from folks of that ilk, here is their favored presentation:

It sure would be nice if University of Illinois could learn to time stamp their images like I finally convinced NSIDC to do. That would be the scientific thing to do.

The offset right now is minus 726,000 square kilometers, an area slightly bigger than the state of Texas (695,621 sqkm). Most of that missing ice extent is in the Barentz and Greenland seas, as noted in this image from NSIDC I have annotated below:

And according the the Naval Research Lab, the extent loss in those areas appears to be entirely the result of wind patterns compacting the ice northward. There are strong northward drift vectors in the Barentz:

*** [edit: Even the latest available ice extent chart from the NSIDC released on March 3, 2012, one day after Mr. Johnson’s article was published, shows ice extent well outside the one standard deviation area.]

[snip – Günther please do take your predictable snark and [self snip], if you have something factual to add to the discussion, please say it, otherwise it’s back to the Neven cave for you. Post Gleick, I have less tolerance for people using methods like yours, so I’m not going to allow you to threadjack anymore with snark. – Anthony]

As we all get older we no longer give our age in months. And as we get much older we manage to remember what decade we are in because the years don’t matter. But we appear intolerant of descrepancies smaller than a gnat’s ass in climate science. This odd behavior is true of CO2 and solar forcing camps to the same degree. Ice alarmists seem to have the same mindset. Proper sceptical research looks for robust results and ignores the hair on the gnat’s ass.

nutso fasst says: March 4, 2012 at 11:00 am
[Well, if they pawned themselves, who’s the broker?] – The government, by proxy, on your behalf.

[How much did they borrow] – Check your pockets.

[ and what good will it do them so long as they remain in hock?] – It does not matter, they can always borrow more next year, unless November goes poorly for socialism in which case they will move to Europe and soak you through the UN. This is assuming that you are not already a comrade of BEST (Bankrupt European Socialist Team); if you are then you have my condolences.

Good article as far as it goes. Would have possibly helped to point out AO shifted in November so more ice was near enough certain. Only concern I have is seems to be a reduction of multi year ice according to multiple reports and as you properly caveated this is no guarantee of return to mean in September.
By the way I’m a convinced warmista but not a scientist.

Maurizio: LANCE-MODIS
—
[snip – Günther please do take your predictable snark and [self snip], if you have something factual to add to the discussion, please say it, otherwise it’s back to the Neven cave for you. Post Gleick, I have less tolerance for people using methods like you, so I’m not going to allow you to threadjack anymore with snark. – Anthony]

That’s fine, Anthony. You just snip and ban. As long as you read it. We both know the truth.

REPLY: Except that your version of truth always comes with some personal derision while ignoring everything else in this post, and that’s the issue. I get it, I got it from your very first few comments ever made here; you don’t like me or this website, take it elsewhere then – Anthony

Andrew30: LOL. It is amazing what all sort of “buggy” bright treehugger types will do to scare folks. I am still waiting for at least one history professor in the world to tell me that there was no MWP or LIA. Seems to me they are awfully quiet in this slowly fading debate. Perhaps history professors have not figured out on how to jump on the gravy train?

Off topic: I see the “widget” finally updated to January CO2 – Thanks to whoever does that!

Back on topic: Not being a statistician, I rely on naive observations. Every year, about “this much” (holds fingers apart) ice melts and re-freezes. Since the beginning of time (1979) about “this much” extra ice has melted. It would take about “this much” more ice to melt before the Arctic becomes ice-free. I don’t see it happening!

If the Arctic became ice-free, and I didn’t “read about it in the papers” (figuratively speaking), how would I know? According to the recent Liu/Curry et al. paper, it would get really cold in the winter. I’ll watch for that… (perhaps “hot” has become “cool” again!)

Thanks to Julienne Stroeve and Walt Meier for being willing to talk to us and answer our questions!

It seems too terribly easy to set up these “institutes”. If these experts so readily stubbles on their own expertise and instead of correction to create a good name of integrity instead are fast on their kness digging like crazy to widen and deepen their own dung hole.

It’s like their’s a website out there with a one-click solution to your own institute. :p

I’ve been watching the open water north of Finland and western Russia all winter. That area froze up early in the season and then opened up in December, an unusual patten given that it’s well above the arctic circle and thus was in constant night. In other words, it could not be blamed on warm air.

I was guessing that it opened up due to a strong or wandering Gulf stream, but now you tell me that it’s wind patterns. Interesting.

Anthony your article was thorough and precise like usual, with third party references so I can form my own opinions. Malte, on the other hand, has studied poly sci and Euro studies and has zero to four years post grad experience, so is more in tune with the consensus. Who to believe?

I don’t think we need to look much further than the top three names on the Arctic Institute website (publicly available data)
Malte Humpert
Founder and Executive Director
M.A. European Studies (2011), Georgetown University
B.A. Political Science (2007), California State University Northridge.
Kathrin Keil
Research Associate – Arctic Security, Cooperation, and Institutions
M.S. European Affairs (2009), Lunds Universitet, Sweden
B.A. International Relations (2007), Technical University Dresden, Germany.
ndreas Østhagen
Research Associate – Norway/EU Arctic Policy
MSc. Politics and Government in the European Union: The International Relations of Europe (2010), London School of Economics (LSE)
B.A. Political Economy (2009), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Political Science! European Studies! International Relations! Politics and Government in the EU!

Yup! These are real heavy weights in the Geophysical science sphere. Look out for a lot more fact free BS from this source. Rocket Scientists they are not!

(add extra commas ,…, -‘s and parenthesis to your taste)

(mods: this may have posted already as my internet threw a wobbly.. Apologies if I am creating work.)

[Periods and parenthesis found. Additional comma’s, however, are still needed. Robt]

A 1m km^2 gain in sea ice extent over a 3-week period in February is completely and utterly meaningless, while a 1m km^2 loss in sea ice extent over a 3-week period in September means the world is coming to end.

The NORSEX graph is interesting as it shows that 2007 ice extent was lower all year round compared to the other years shown. You can’t just have a quick summer melt to be ice free, you need to keep the ice back in the previous winter as well. 2012 is looking a lot like 2009-2010. Ice-free in 2013? It will be interesting to hear Suzuki explain why it wasn’t. Look forward to the “minimum” poll.

@Pamela Gray says: March 4, 2012 at 11:03 am
“As we all get older we no longer give our age in months. And as we get much older we manage to remember what decade we are in because the years don’t matter. But we appear intolerant of descrepancies smaller than a gnat’s ass in climate science.”

If you don’t get grumpy as you get older, you aren’t paying attention…

Presently, the Baffin Bay southern sea-ice boundary extends from Disko Island to the southwest, towards Canada. This would imply that prior to AD 1250 this boundary was more northerly and gradually moved towards the vicinity of the core site until after AD 1500 (Little Ice Age), when it was positioned south of the core site.

Been watching this little uptick. I am hoping it hits the average line so I can blast the guardian environment section and anywhere else with this news. I am also smart enough to know that mother nature will decide what happens.

The sheer intelligence of all these warmist fools. So clever they have fooled themselves. They really think PR and bullying can change mother nature, total tools. I’ll keep on checking the artic ice pages.

They do have a couple historians that should make the connections that inescapably conclude CAGW skepticism is not only warranted but absolutely necessary.
1. Historical evidence of worldwide LIA, MWP.
2. Actions by the CAGW crowd that parallel historical fanatics.
3. Historically claims of “scientific consensus” to a conclusion have been consistently made for supporting a conclusion with insufficient data for the conclusion stand on the evidence alone.

You have to be quite wary of CT, Im pretty sure they fiddle with the borders of each ice section to get the desired result. They also love to delay as much as possible showing any big rebound. Also be on guard for the Downward “adjustments” at times like these. DMI is pretty thruthful methinks

Is there any ‘mileage’ in the fact that to the West of Svalbard where the ice seems to have an objection to forming, there is a divergent plate boundary with the possibility of thermal vents? The Gulf Stream, I believe, has an effect. (I notice Wiki refers to it as The ‘Golf’ Stream; is that to do with it warming the West coast of Scotland?)

Measuring sometime around June and Dec, makes the most sense…
Trying to get a measurement at the extremes, when the most unstable, is silly

Going to politely disagree with you there. While the sea maximum and sea ice minimum occur over a long period of time (as do “most” climatic/geologic sinusoidal/cosine wave type periodic functions!) the minimum or maximum is readily apparent. It is also a visual number, and for better or worse, we are stuck with it.

Sea measurements at the mid-point are going to vary significantly from year to year. Using a single arbitrary date would be valid perhaps, but only if you determined which date was a valid “average”. If you would insist on date-based trends, then you should use fall equinox (sea maximum Antarctic/southern hemisphere + sea ice minimum Arctic/north hemisphere) December solstice (near mid-point both hemispheres), spring equinox (Arctic maximum, Antarctic minimum) , and summer solstice (near Antarctic mid-point rising, near arctic midpoint falling). But you need to go back to ALL of the available ice histories and also determine “what” number you are averaging. What “smoothing” you will use. Why you made your choices.

This “Institute” is just a web site put together with a couple of students and some others with low level degrees in “Political Science”, “European Studies”, “International Relations” etc. A web site, not much more. No science involved so I would not get too excited about their silliness.

I never understood why it’s a bad thing for less ice during the summer. During the summer, it means that there is warmer temperatures from the equator on out. It doesn’t mean that the north pole isn’t frozen over. What’s the problem? Habitable regions are even more habitable. Why is this bad? Also, aside from 2007, the sea ice extents seems to be following a stable pattern.

RACookPE1978 says:
March 4, 2012 at 1:15 pmSea measurements at the mid-point are going to vary significantly from year to year. Using a single arbitrary date would be valid perhaps, but only if you determined which date was a valid “average”. If you would insist on date-based trends, then you should use fall equinox (sea maximum Antarctic/southern hemisphere + sea ice minimum Arctic/north hemisphere) December solstice (near mid-point both hemispheres), spring equinox (Arctic maximum, Antarctic minimum) , and summer solstice (near Antarctic mid-point rising, near arctic midpoint falling). But you need to go back to ALL of the available ice histories and also determine “what” number you are averaging. What “smoothing” you will use. Why you made your choices.

Thanks, I wanted to about to ask the newbie question of how Sun and Moon tides affected these, but read to the end first..
[http://www.moonconnection.com/tides.phtml]

EW-3 says [March 4, 2012 at 1:18 pm]:
Something very narcissistic about their mission statement;
“The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, interdisciplinary, and independent source for information”
Sounds like they are not doing any actual work, just want to establish itself as a big shot.
=====================================================================

As much as I love the sea ice page, I have come to realize the sea ice numbers have little meaning. The wind and currents can vary the numbers by over one hundred thousand square km. per day. The sites that produce the numbers ignore anything under 15% and they don’t count anything over 100%. (the wind can pile ice from one area, causing a reduction in area while maintaining the same amount of ice. When the wind/current reverses that piling of ice can unpile causing and increase in sea ice area/extent while there being little actual increase in sea ice.
To base global warming on decreasing sea ice numbers is not logical but it won’t stop me watching the numbers. I love the ice flow vectors and velocities. Thanks Anthony and crew. Kent

The Arctic Institute has, I think, changed in some way just recently. I maintain a favorite to it because of their Arctic Journal with copies online all the way back to 1949, many with papers by some of the early Arctic researchers after WWII. I originally found it by Steve Mcintyre’s use of some of their papers years ago. It’s a great resource. But the website is different now, so there must have been very recent changes.

Folks — that weather man’s original article is full of factual inaccuracies.
Look at the link at the top of the article, the dotted line in the chart is the monthly average for the last 30+ years, 2012 is clearly below the average as is every year since 1997, it doesn’t support whats being said in the article. It does show that 2012 is trending up, but well within the ranges of the past few years.

Here are some additional Norsex charts (same website that the author quotes), see the second thru third charts, clearly showing downward trend, year on year and into 2012 for arctic ice cover;

A ps to my last post; I would suggest a paper called “Ice,Open Water, and Winter Climate in the Eastern Arctic of North America: parts I & II” from about 1949. Anyone truly interested in how we have found out about presatellite Arctic ice really needs to read these papers. It was by F. Kenneth Hare and Margaret Montgomery. I checked and the Arctic journal page is still there, just a little harder to find.

Steam powered satellites – Check
Jesus references – check
New Ice Age – Check
But what about the drowning polar bears? None mentioned the polar bears. Oops sorry have to wait for June for that don’t I?

Re: Andrew30 and the comment to Dave Suzuki about the Northwest Passage …
I live in Vancouver where you can go down to the local Maritime museum and view a quaint little wooden ship (St. Roch) that used to ply the Arctic.
Back in the ’40s before we had Dave Suzuki and his Foundation paying DeSmog to rant, the Mounties used the St. Roch to get around up there in the North and were able to navigate the NorthWest passage TWICE between 1942 and 1944 and mind you, I have seen this ship and she is no icebreaker.
Have a look yourself athttp://hnsa.org/ships/stroch.htm

Both you and the ‘institute’ should bow to The Broadcaster Who Understands All Things:

“Various computer simulations have generated a range of dates by which the Arctic might be completely ice-free in summer and autumn, ranging from 2016 to about 2060. A few years ago, one projection even showed 2013 was possible, though this now appears unlikely.” – R. Black, BBC, Feb 27th.

So the warmists have all this completely under control. Sometime between 4 years and 48 years to Thermogeddon. Black seems to have given up on Suzuki’s claim of 2013. Dunno why…

PS: Most of us this side of the pond don’t know much about this Suzuki character. Have you heard of David Attenborough over in the USA? Beware the final program in his series on the Poles – beautiful scenery turns to ugly propoganda.

Are you sure this is the same Arctic Institute? There seem to be various sites with similar names. Odd that this one gives no details of its whereabouts or funding and obscures its domain registration.

Jeff Alberts says:
March 4, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Question. Why is the 1979-2000 (twenty hundred) average better than any other average? Is it a matter of “It’s all we have so we call it good”?

A year or so ago I explained that they would be reluctant to calculate a new average because the lower data over the last few years would pull the average down, and thus make the current numbers look better. Each year that goes by without a new average calculation reinforces this idea. However, it is customary with “normals” in weather-related reporting to end the period with a zero-year (2010). As we now have that end point, they should at least drop the first two years (1979, 1980). So don’t expect a new average until early in 2021!

@Mark Johnson can you please explain how this graph goes together with your statement “Sea ice extent is at a seven-year high”
the graph clearly shows that ice extent was higher in 2009 and 2010! and this is using the NORSEX SSM/I data that you are talking about.

also, can you please show prove that USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole in 1958? Because according to most sources including this news reel this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf97e8yX0k8 is did not surface at the pole until 1959.

REPLY: “karl williams” is a fake name with a fake email address created specifically for sock puppetry here. The owner of this persona has admitted this to me when confronted with solid evidence. – Anthony

If we play the “let’s all freak out” game, then, back in 2006, Alarmists would all be jumping for joy around March 25, for the lack of ice would be proving their alarmism “well founded.” But by late summer they would be garlic-faced and changing the subject.

What the heck happened in 2006? I think the winds packed all the ice like a child packing a snowball, making the ice-area less during the winter, but the ice less-easy-to-melt in the summer.

The same thing may be happening this year, as it has been quite windy in the arctic. It is difficult to notice the compression of ice using satellites, for the compression takes the form of pressure ridges. Even when you zoom in with a satellite picture, only the biggest pressure ridges can be seen, for even when they stick up 20 feet (and therefore stick down 180 feet,) they are seldom half-the-length-of a-football-field wide. Many smaller ones are unseen, visually, and I imagine they are hard to pick up with the pinging of a radar. Therefore all “volume readings” seem dubious, to me, and I am betting my nickel (and no more) that the ice this year is well compressed and will be stubborn, when it comes to melting.

However does this mean anything? Many times less arctic ice than usual goes hand in hand with the hounds of winter charging much further south than usual. A great example is after Tambora Volcano exploded in 1815, leading to the “Year Without A Summer.” Though people around here, (in New Hampshire,) had to import hay from Pennsylvania, and many dairy cows had to be slaughtered because they lacked fodder (and humans lacked food,) to the far north the arctic became relatively ice free, leading to that famous quote from the year 1819 which begins:

“It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been during the last two years greatly abated.”

If a volcano as huge as Tamboro could have the counterintuitive effect of melting arctic ice, what might a “Quiet Sun” do?

REPLY: Mr. “Radner” (which appears to be a fake name and a fake email address, used with multiple identities here) what eco-organization do you work for in Washington DC and why do you feel it necessary to emulate Dr. Peter Gleick by assuming false identities and fake email addresses?

If what you say is so true and important, why can’t you stand behind it? – Anthony Watts

I am in the middle of reading “The Worst Journey in the World” By Apsley Cherry-Gerrard and in it he is amazed that the whole of Mucmurdo sound in front of hut point can be bound in ice 12ft thick one day and completely clear to the open ocean the next,

@anthony
You may want to consider making false accusations in the comment feed about fake names and fake email accounts. Please feel free to email me at steveradner(at)gmail.com if you have doubts about the existence of that email account or my person.

[REPLY: Bluster all you like. You have commented under several different identities. It’s called “sock-puppetry” and is pathetically dishonest. -REP]

R. Shearer says:
March 4, 2012 at 11:25 am
It’s too bad our satellite records don’t go back to the days when hurricanes were ravishingravaging wind-powered Spanish galleons full of plundered Central American gold. Oh the irony.

Ah, annual harbingers of spring. The first robin. The lilacs beginning to bud. The annual bemoaning of how bad “extent” sucks when “volume” is what really matters –and yet we don’t have enough historical volume information, both length of time and granularity (i.e. number of data points over the course of the length of time), to make volume observations actually interesting.

Speaking of Arctic Institutes– any word of the recent Hanson-Gore expedition pushing towards Ninety South, trumpeting -30 degree F temperatures as conducive to a diminishing Ross Sea? “March of the Penguins,” not to say Shackleton in 1914, strikes a chord.

From their mission statement: “The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, interdisciplinary, and independent source for information”

OK. So how are they planning to become an “independent” information source?
— Did I miss their large scale effort to instrument the Arctic?
— Are they launching any polar observation satellites?
— Are they funding others to do these functions for them?
— Do they employ any “real” scientists? (Political Science, Anthropology, “Indigenous Knowledge” Studies, History, etc., DO NOT COUNT AS SCIENCE!)

why is the weatherman lying about the USS Skate? It did not surface at the North pole in 1958. it couldn’t because ice was too thick for them to break through!

The weatherman was off just by just a year. The USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole on March 15, 1959, according to Wikipedia.

REPLY: The user “john christie” is an admitted fake name with a fake email address created specifically to act as a sock puppet. The person doing this confessed to me after our moderation team figured out he was also posting as “Steve Radner” and also as “karl williams” and I confronted with solid evidence. It is “Gleick” all over again and there’s a backstory developing. I haven’t decided yet what to do with it all. – Anthony

The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, (We demand stuff) interdisciplinary (Hey, it’s a religion to us.), and independent (We won’t listen to ANYONE who disagrees!) source for information (Ours) and in-depth analysis (except, don’t expect us to stay current) about the developments (imagined ice loss) in the High North. The Institute was founded in 2011 (All the good scams were taken) and currently aims to bring together scholars and researchers (GRANT MONEY!!! Beautiful, beautiful grant money!) to build a growing stock of (Money) knowledge and expertise on the Arctic region. In contrast to (people who know what they’re talking about) existing platforms for Arctic affairs, The Arctic Institute is not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the Arctic states. (We’re like that crazy uncle nobody’s related to…..)

A quick peek at the AI’s site reveals that of the entire staff only one member has any kind of technical degree (Bachelors Anthropology), and it appears precious little disciplined experience. This does not include:
Malte Humpert
Founder and Executive Director
M.A. European Studies (2011), Georgetown University
B.A. Political Science (2007), California State University Northridgemalte.humpert@thearcticinstitute.org

Looks like a crop of needy alarmist babies. Look out – they may try to prose us to death!

It does appear that the AI kids are very interested in the arctic area resource rights issues – and probably controlling them. I believe they are betting on making a killing as the ice melts away (in their world). Here’s hoping they have a Plan B.

why is the weatherman lying about the USS Skate? It did not surface at the North pole in 1958. it couldn’t because ice was too thick for them to break through!

Reference, please! (Not the Skate, high resolution data of ice thickness in 1958.) Faked data okay, we have popcorn. BTW, you missed the obvious gambit – Lord Monckton has observed that the surfacing occurred before sunrise that year. I’ve been meaning to do a post on that for over a year – I even got a photograph of a submarine under similar lighting circumstances in February! I might have time this anniversary.

Hmm, if a typo constitutes lying, what should we accuse you and your altered egos of doing?

Reply to AJB:
You are correct. The Arctic Institute in the post is not the same Arctic Institute. The one I am referring to is associated with the U. of Calgary and has “of North America” in its name. I’m very sorry–I should have checked more closely.

I think the whole point of the “Institute” is revealed by the Donate button bottom right of their home page. Their mission statement should read “… to establish ourselves of worthy on investment by green leaning corporations – let’s face it, if Heartland Institute can get millions we ought to be able to get more”.

On a separate tack – isn’t it interesting how people’s writing style gives themselves away as I think it is likely that Gleick did in his alleged forgery, so it is with sock puppets, with Christie/Radnor’s/Williams grubby mitts inside them.

Finally, am illustration of how misleading 15% ice extent can be by considering the two limiting cases (ignoring ice piling on ice). Ice at minimum density of 15% evenly distributed covers say 15Mkm^2, when compacted (by wind and current) to 100% covers 2.25Mkm^2. That is a 6.67:1 ratio – simplistic, I know but easy to understand.

There used to be a graph at Cryosphere today which I think was quite illuminating.

That graph showed the historic Arctic sea ice grouped into four quarters, Winter (Jan-Mar), Spring (Apr-Jun, Summer (Jul-Sep) and Autumn (Oct-Dec). The striking thing about it was that, although the Summer ice has declined severely, the Winter ice shows much less decline. This means that the Arctic has been producing more and more ice each year (the difference or range between Smmer and Winter).

This probably does not bode well for the future as each ton of sea ice mens a ton of very cold brine as well. The life cycle time of the brine is very to very, very long.

P.S. Is in not interesting how the definition of, say, Winter differs as you travel to the poles? The largest figure for Acrtic sea ice is sometime in March usually. Just a few days before the Equinox.

No need to be sorry, a. Odd though how this mob has suddenly appeared from nowhere in the void of Canadian funding withdrawal. Peter may be right but I’m getting a slight whiff of UN/EU money under the pavements of DC somehow. Overtly political, in it for the long game and little to do with ice. Try looking at the main man’s other WEB sites. For your free sockpuppetsRus guide, see here – no mention of house writing style though :-). Anyone into 503-c trail mining, where is the money coming from?

Anthony, the use of the slang term ‘pwn’ in your article is incorrect. It appears that you’ve interpreted as meaning embarrassing one’s self. That’s not correct. It’s meaning is “to dominate or defeat in an extremely one-sided contest.” It has a cocky, trash-talking connotation. Black holes pwn the fabric of space-time surrounding them. Tom Brady pwned Tim Tebow during the past season. The Artic Institute tried to pwn Johnson, but failed.

Consider editing the article headline and in the third paragraph, the sentence where you say The Arctic Institute pwned themselves.

REPLY: Wait till you see the update over what transpired behind the scenes with the sockpuppet, and I think the headline will have much more relevance – Anthony

CodeTech says:
“Myself, I’ll consider Arctic ice charts to have some sort of meaning when they stop using a “baseline” (ie. 1979-2000) and start including the last decade in the “average”.”

That seems to be the elephant in the room that neither Mark Johnson nor the “Arctic Institute” address. They both bandy about the term: “30 year average”; when, in fact, neither the ice charts from NSIDC nor NORSEX have a line that represents a “30 year average”.

NSDIC uses an average, from 1979 to 2000. NORSEX uses an average from 1979 to 2006. This leaves out significant data (especially ice data for year 2007) with no valid explanation. The term “cherrypicking” comes to mind for such manipulations as the different periods averaged conveniently leave out significant recent data. If these recent data were included in the averages, the current ice area or extent would plot much closer to the average.

I like the fact you have identified a sockpuppet and not just disappeared him silently. Rather than block him, it would be better to transform the name to “sockpuppet.” or add the label “suspected puppet/ flamer” at the level of the name.
In this case the graph Mr Puppet linked only allows you to compare maxima and minima as it does not superimpose the cycles. But as we are not a a maxima, It does not talk to the claim that today we a higher /lower than the same day in other cycles.
I note the date and location of the sub photo is disputed – It supplied and identified by Grapham P Davis as being 1958 on some sites, and by him as in 1959 in other sites.

Observing Ice did not start with satellites Marco. 15% coverage used in calculating extent about as much ice as you want to observe from a ship close up if you plan not to stay. So the extent from satellites and ship/subs can be spliced. Then the key arguement is dealing with the record around the early part of the 20 century.

The recent uptick in the daily ice extent comes primarily from growth in the Bering Sea and Baffin Bay/Davis strait that both gained more than 80,000 sq-km of ice between 2/29/12 and 3/4/12. The February monthly mean ice extent was the 4th lowest in the modern satellite record, and since 2004, every year has had a February monthly mean ice extent below 15 million sq-km except for 2008 (15.01 million sq-km). The trend in winter sea ice extent is small (-3% per decade), but it is statistically significant. Regionally, there are statistically significant (95% confidence) negative trends in winter ice extent everywhere except the Bering Sea which has a positive trend (though not statistically significant).

Regardless of February being the 4th lowest during the 1979-present data record, or the recent uptick in extent, Mr. Johnson should know that it has little to no bearing on what will happen this summer as these southerly regions melt out every summer anyway. More interesting is the distribution of the perennial ice and its thickness. Given the positive AO throughout most of this winter, there was good export of mulityear ice out of Fram Strait, such that this winter there was a larger amount of 3+ year old ice exported than in the last 4 winters (the amount was similar to the amount exported during the 2006/2007 winter). This helps to precondition the Arctic Basin to ice loss, since thinner ice melts out easier.

As much as anything, it’s where the ice isn’t that’s important.
There seem to be big gaps near the North pole. This would indicate to me huge areas of sea dissipating energy to space. This is not good!

After being confronted with irrefutable evidence, the director of The Arctic Institute has admitted in an email to me that he created fake names and fake email accounts for the express purpose of sockpuppeting WUWT comments. It appears that he also sockpuppeted his OWN website to make comments against TV met Mark Johnson of Cleveland.

I’m giving the “Institute” chance to put a full apology on their web page before I run a new story on this and what our moderation team has found, not only about the deception and fakery, but about the “Institute” itself.

What’s at stake is scientific integrity and accuracy. I believe both NSIDC and the Arctic Institute have an agenda to fan the flames of arctic ice depletion. Frankly I don’t trust either group to accurately map the extent of arctic ice. History has shown that the extent of arctic ice is replete with gains and losses. It is more than disappointing to see government funded groups push an agenda consistent with Al Gore’s crazy, wrongheaded, fraudulent malevolence. Worse yet, the fraud is the basis of public policy—this is worse than fraud it’s venality on its face.
Uzi

Russell, if you would like to read up on the processing of the satellite data to produce the sea ice records that NSIDC distributes, I would be happy to point you to those links. You can also download the raw data if you like and run your own sea ice algorithm on the data if you don’t trust NSIDC to process the data. All the data, and the algorithms are freely available for anyone to do their own processing if they so choose. That way you can make your own plots and determine for yourself whether or not the sea ice is in a period of decline. You may note though that all sea ice groups, using different algorithms, different sensors, etc. all reach the same basic conclusions: Arctic sea ice is in a state of decline.

I think what some folks may not completely realize is that observations are one realization of natural climate variability and any external forcing. Thus, you cannot separate out natural variability from external forcing (such as rising concentrations of GHGs) from the observational data record, such as the sea ice record. Numerous studies have shown that the sea ice decline is a result of atmospheric and oceanic warming, and anomalous wind patterns that helped to remove ice from the Arctic Basin. But how much is a result of natural climate variability versus GHGs cannot be determined from the observations alone since both are acting on the system at the same time. Climate models on the other hand provide numerous realizations of internal/natural variability, which is one means to allow for separation of noise versus external forcing on the sea ice trends. Those studies (the most recent one being the Kay et al. 2011 GRL study) have all come to the same conclusion, that the last 30+ years of Arctic sea ice decline cannot be explained by natural variability alone.

“In fact, it’s been met with so much controversy that I received several e-mails from the founder of https://wattsupwiththat.com/. He demanded that I recant statements made within my post and apologize, and if I did not take these actions before a specified time, he would reveal my address or other personal details online, threatening to put my “personal life at risk”. I continue to stand by the assertions I made in my post, but I do understand that people may disagree with my conclusions.”

On the contrary, natural variability is fully sufficient to explain the Arctic ice decline [which is not in dispute], since it has happened repeatedly throughout the pre-industrial Holocene. And so far the null hypothesis remains unfalsified.

If CO2 is putatively causing Arctic ice decline then I am sure there is a convoluted explanation of why Antarctic ice is rising. But I don’t buy it. CO2 is everywhere, and there is a whiff of the argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy in trying to blame CO2. Also, a 0.7°C rise in global temperature is not going to melt Arctic ice, which is still far below freezing. The effect of ocean currents and wind is the simplest explanation, therefore the most likely cause. Occam’s Razor.

But the more important consideration is the reason behind Russell’s comment. You can see how badly the lies, distortions, lack of transparency, and ignoring of the scientific method is damaging the public’s perception of scientists in general. It is a rare scientist with the courage to speak out against those causing the damage. The same scientists who defend Peter Gleick’s indefensible actions, or remain silent regarding The Arctic Institute’s ethics-challenged shenanigans are making the problem worse. Scientists in general are losing credibility with the public. Why are these serious ethical lapses tolerated by the vast majority of honest scientists? Does the truth not matter any more?

info@thearcticinstitute.org
The recipient’s e-mail address was not found in the recipient’s e-mail system. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please check the e-mail address and try resending this message, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.

The Arctic Institute has been monitoring comments in response to my article made on other websites. Both the Institute and I were subjected to repeated ridicule in these forums. As a result, I no longer felt comfortable commenting on these forums with my real name, so I resorted to the use of pseudonyms in order to address issues that came up within the comments. I apologize to the readers of WUWT for any confusion this may have caused.

The confusion didn’t last very long! Intriguing that he felt he needed three imaginary friends to help out, one would have done just fine. Hmm, just how well known are the AI staff? From Google searches it does appear that all are real people. Here are the “results” for each. (N.B. Google’s results number is greatly overstated. Sort of like CO2 and climate sensitivity.)

I’m giving the “Institute” chance to put a full apology on their web page before I run a new story on this and what our moderation team has found, not only about the deception and fakery, but about the “Institute” itself.

Monday, March 5, 2012Message from the Founder of The Arctic Institute, Malte Humpert
…
In fact, it’s been met with so much controversy that I received several e-mails from the founder of https://wattsupwiththat.com/. He demanded that I recant statements made within my post and apologize, and if I did not take these actions before a specified time, he would reveal my address or other personal details online, threatening to put my “personal life at risk”. I continue to stand by the assertions I made in my post, but I do understand that people may disagree with my conclusions.
…
The Arctic Institute has been monitoring comments in response to my article made on other websites. Both the Institute and I were subjected to repeated ridicule in these forums. As a result, I no longer felt comfortable commenting on these forums with my real name, so I resorted to the use of pseudonyms in order to address issues that came up within the comments. I apologize to the readers of WUWT for any confusion this may have caused.
…

Let’s review the details. What Humpert has done is slander if he speaks it, and libel if he writes it, and he’s done the second. That’s correct, yes?

Smokey, just because there have been times in the Earth’s history without sea ice, this does not mean that an external forcing is not acting on the climate system today. There are many papers out there that have dis-proven the null hypothesis. And there are several reasons why the Arctic is behaving differently than the Antarctic, many of which have been discussed on WUWT. You may notice that the Arctic Ocean is surrounded by land whereas there is a continent that covers the South Pole. That in itself influences atmospheric and oceanic circulation that impacts on ice growth and melt. In addition, the Antarctic mostly has a seasonal ice cover, whereas the Arctic was mostly defined by a perennial ice cover until recently.

I had never heard of the Arctic Institute until today. While WUWT may want to focus on the handful of climate scientists who have been unethical, this in no way means that all climate scientists are that way or are not following the scientific method. I would encourage you to read the papers out there on the sea ice cover and judge for yourself on the quality of the scientific method employed in the analysis.

Sorry I don’t have the link saved, but it is available in one of the many posts on this site related to our dear friend Dr Peter Gleick. I am referring to his testimony before the US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on 2/7/07. I printed it out for future reference. It’s quite complete, but I didn’t save the link.

I refer to his paper on “Deceitful Tactics and Abuse of the Scientific Process paper, referenced to his Pacific Institute, 2007”, that was presented at that hearing.

I checked out the link to the Arctic Institute site, provided by the paper at issue, and was appalled by the infancy of the thinking that has been published. I have observed that children below the age of two normally don’t understand ethics or morality, or even truth since they often deal in thoughts of fantasy. In my opinion, the individuals at this site have apparently never matured beyond that age, or perhaps they are teenagers that share the same thought pattern.

Please reference the Gleick document, again I am sorry I don’t have the link, and look at his points regarding “Mischaracterizations of an Argument”. In my opinion, the Arctic Institute site uses every one of these mischaracterizations chronicled by the Pacific Institute. This includes Begging the Question, Circular Reasoning, Partial Truths, Selective Choice of Problems, Straw Man Argument, Loaded Question, False Dichotomy/False Dilemma, Misplaced Burden of Proof, Confusing Cause and Effect, Red Herring, and Slippery Slopes. Apparently the operators at this site were well schooled.

Juliene, while I certainly respect your statements. You have a problem. You have climate scientists splicing temperature stations in the Antarctic to show a rise in temperature on the cover of TIME magazine. You have climate scientists, very famous ones, telling us the arctic summer will be ice free in 2000, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and now 2013 or 2015. Other climate scientists are adjusting the temperature record at this very moment (GISStemp v4/HADcrut v3), upward by erasing warmth from the 1930s, & 40s in places like Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Scotland and Russia. They tell us this is just noise, but with it they will be able to erase the past decade of cooling and make 2010 the warmest year ever. When UEA announces its new and improved v3 data set this year, will you be surprised at the reaction that will occur. And the list goes on and on. With all due respect to you, the scientific method seems secondary to what is going on here.

quote:In fact, it’s been met with so much controversy that I received several e-mails from the founder of https://wattsupwiththat.com/. He demanded that I recant statements made within my post and apologize, and if I did not take these actions before a specified time, he would reveal my address or other personal details online, threatening to put my “personal life at risk”. I continue to stand by the assertions I made in my post, but I do understand that people may disagree with my conclusions.

In Malte Humperts comments at The Arctic Institute, he claims to have sent me an e-mail asking for sources and verification of my statements BEFORE Mr. Humpert published his hit piece late last week. I received no e-mail from Malte Humpert nor the Arctic Institute. I have asked for the original e-mail from him. I have also inquired as to whether it was addressed with his name, a staff member’s name or, perhaps, one of his alias’s. I was blocked from commenting on his site and my request sent through info@arcticinstitute bounced back… So I still have no e-mail or answers.

REPLY: Mr. “Radner” (which appears to be a fake name and a fake email address, used with multiple identities here) what eco-organization do you work for in Washington DC and why do you feel it necessary to emulate Dr. Peter Gleick by assuming false identities and fake email addresses?

If what you say is so true and important, why can’t you stand behind it? – Anthony Watts

======================

and followed by:
======================

steve radner says:
March 4, 2012 at 6:51 pm

@anthony
You may want to consider making false accusations in the comment feed about fake names and fake email accounts. Please feel free to email me at steveradner(at)gmail.com if you have doubts about the existence of that email account or my person.

[REPLY: Bluster all you like. You have commented under several different identities. It’s called “sock-puppetry” and is pathetically dishonest. -REP]

and…

steve radner says:
March 4, 2012 at 6:57 pm

so when you don’t like comments you accuse people of being dishonest. excellent.

[REPLY: Brazen to the end. There are quite a few comments here we “don’t like”. They get posted. Comments from ethical posters get posted. You’re done here. -REP]

steve radner says:
March 4, 2012 at 7:01 pm

oh great now you won’t even post my comments.

========================================

He got caught because one of our moderators noticed three different names all coming from the same IP address in Washington DC. All were Gmail accounts, and they were used to make attack comments like those above. I’m publishing them since “radner” already gave his email address above willingly in comments with his challenge

Of course all IP addresses in every blog software (wordpress, typepad, tumblr) are recorded when comments are made so that moderators can figure out what people are sockpuppeting or making threats. We get this all the time at WUWT as do many blogs. People behave entirely different when they think they are anonymous.

If we hadn’t gotten all these different names from the same IP address the moderator wouldn’t have gone looking. But we were given a challenge by “Radner”. It was much like the Gleick affair, an interesting puzzle.

So we used one of the publicly available tools to trace where that IP address was. It traced to Washington DC, and an apartment complex that offers internet service to their tenants. We put the name of the apartment complex into Google, and out popped all the details, including a street address.

It also showed in Google searches that there was a bedbug infestation problem there. The moderation team got quite a laugh out of that as did I. Where’s that DDT when you really need it? ;-)

So when we put the street address into Google, guess what popped out? The address of the so called “Arctic Institute” It was in an old web page for another website that looked identical in format:

Comically, this has now been “disappeared” (as has the street address on the remaining working page of http://www.thearcticinstitute.org). Of course anyone can still look at it and the email of the address of the founder referencing “The Arctic Institute” simply by putting the URL into Google and viewing the Google cache. We didn’t have to last night, because the page was up and the address plainly given in full public view.

So I dropped Malte Humpert an email (using his public email on his page here: http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/p/staff.html) telling him that we didn’t appreciate this comment:
==========================
steve radner says:
March 4, 2012 at 6:57 pm (Edit)

so when you don’t like comments you accuse people of being dishonest. excellent.
==========================
I said in my email that he was the one that was being dishonest with his making up fake names and emails like Glieck did to attack via the internet and that we had backtraced his deception for all three email addresses.

No response…so about an hour later I sent a slightly stronger email laying it all out irrefutably, and shortly after I did get a response. That response included an apology and admission of “unethical behavior” on Mr. Humpert’s part. He said he’d “like to meet me someday and apologize in person”. I was not impressed. He also in a second email begged me not to reveal any of the details of his street address, because as it turns out, he’s running the “Institute” out of his apartment!

Quite a contrast to the big presentation they make about “the Institute” and all that on their web page.

So I said I’d think about it. Today I dropped him an email saying look, here’s all you have to do, just put up an apology on your website about the sockpuppetry, apologize to Mr. Johnson, point out that there’s no scientists actually at “The Institute” and I won’t need to publish anything. Basically I said “here’s your chance to act ethically”. I gave him a way out.

Meanwhile, he spent the day “disappearing” a whole variety of websites (like Ric Werme points out above with his personal webpage above) it was comical to watch because Mr. Humpert apparently just doesn’t understand how the Internet works…everything he tried to disappear remains cached at Google, and many other websites and search engines. It is all still there for anyone who wants to look just like when it was public info.

Just about anybody with any Internet savvy can figure this all out, there’s no giant secret here, but when you put your home address out in the open and call it an “institute” somebody is bound to figure out this silliness at some point and call you on it. That’s this risk you take when you mix the two.

The event in total is comical, and has provided the moderation staff and myself quite a few chuckles over the past 24 hours watching it all unfold.

Well, tonight, he published what has to be the most laughable apology ever.

I suppose this is what passes as an apology for “sockpuppeting” to a person like him:

The Arctic Institute has been monitoring comments in response to my article made on other websites. Both the Institute and I were subjected to repeated ridicule in these forums. As a result, I no longer felt comfortable commenting on these forums with my real name, so I resorted to the use of pseudonyms in order to address issues that came up within the comments. I apologize to the readers of WUWT for any confusion this may have caused.

Generally, one needs only one identity when you want to play fake-out. Peter Gleick needed only one, Mr. Humpert felt so “uncomfortable” that he needed three!

Then, in the style of teflon, what he does next is flip around my suggestions that he doesn’t have to reveal his home address, which is also the address of the “Institute” and then turns that around into making it look like I’m making a personal threat against him. I wasn’t. All I wanted was him to publicly apologize for being dishonest while accusing me of being dishonest for no longer accepting his comments in violation of our stated site policy. And I wanted him to point out that his institute really isn’t an “Institute” at all in the brick and mortar academic sense, just a guy in his apartment and some friends trying to make enough noise to attract funding. The web facade he’s constructed is highly misleading.

So, for the record, I don’t much care what Mr. Humpert does with his one room “Institute” in an apartment building that has a bedbug problem. He can say or do whatever he wants. The only thing he can’t do is comment here anymore.

One of our moderators wrote that this might be a “teachable moment”. I doubt it. Mr. Humpert doesn’t seem to have learned anything about ethics here.

It would be sad, if it weren’t so darned funny watching it all. – Anthony Watts

The null hypothesis has never been falsified. Why do you think that Kevin Trenberth is demanding that it must be turned on its head, and that scientific skeptics should now have the onus of, in effect, proving a negative? Trenberth knows that the null hypothesis completely deconstructs his alternative CO2=CAGW conjecture. That is why he wants the null hypothesis to be reversed: because it undermines his runaway global warming alternative hypothesis. If the climate null hypothesis had been falsified, Trenberth wouldn’t care about it.

You state that “the Arctic was mostly defined by a perennial ice cover until recently.” There are a lot of similar uncited opinions like that in your comments. I provided several citations showing that the Arctic has been mostly, or completely, ice free at times during the Holocene. Yet you claim that until recently there has been perennial Arctic ice cover, despite eyewitness observations as recently as the 1920’s showing that there was less Arctic ice cover than there is now. Sorry to have to disagree with your conjecture, which as I’ve shown is simply not factual.

Natural variability is entirely sufficient to account for all of the current changes in the Arctic. I did not say that there are no other factors at work. But that is conjecture, not verifiable, testable fact. And there is way too much conjecture in what passes for climate science. That is what generates grants, I understand that. But there is far too little legitimate skepticism, and far too much uncritical acceptance of opinions – AKA: conjectures.

People amaze me. This reminds of a show where they catch shoplifters. Deny, deny, deny, some of them even after they are shown the “Clear Video” of them stealing. I keep a special place in my heart for Liars and Thieves.

I was the moderator who first noticed Mr. Humpert’s sock-puppetry and tracked the IP address. Anthony made the connection to Arctic Institute. He kindly kept me copied on the e-mail exchange, so I can assure everyone that the sequence of events described by Anthony is correct and the depiction at Arctic Institute is quite distorted. The moderation staff, sterling individuals who you’ve all come to respect and admire, I’m sure, unearthed quite a bit of material that Anthony has discreetly not made public. Anyone interested in the back story can do their own research and reach their own conclusions.

If Mr. Humpert had chosen to argue his case here in his own name rather than trying to astro-turf WUWT he would have been welcomed. Anthony and the senior moderators are always stressing the importance of moderating with a very light hand and erring on the side of liberality so that this site does not become an echo chamber like others we could mention. I have learned a great deal from the commenters here at WUWT, both pro and con, and hope that our efforts will keep this blog a place where people can both learn and not be afraid to express themselves.

Have you noticed he could have done a preemptive apology last July? The ICCC-6 meeting hosted by the Heartland Institute was at the Marriott Wardman Park at 2660 Woodley Rd. 1.4 miles away! Lost opportunity.

I assume your last link was supposed to land on your 8:17 PM comment. For me, it lands instead on REP’s 9:28 comment. Took me a while to figure out what it was about, but was a very entertaining read, once I did.

Well, you know what this means, the Arctic Institute will now retaliate. You have to make sure all of the WUWT office staff, from the well-paid employees to the interns from the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, don’t answer any emails with board member names on gmail accounts requesting the recent board meeting documents, like the budget sheets showing the untraceable cash donations from Big Green, for maintaining a plausible facade of “climate science denial” and the persecuting honest respectable climate scientists that helps greatly with their fundraising efforts. Especially don’t release the ultra-secret Testaments of the High Rabbis of the Carbon Temple, as outsiders such as them will find it entirely too bland and will fake up their own “sexed-up” version anyway.

In real news, or what passes for it, a quick ctrl-u of an Arctic Institute page to show the html code shows their site is actually on Blogger, which is owned by Google.

The Arctic Institute is convinced that the developments in the Arctic will have lasting ramifications for international relations, international law, international climate change policy, international trade, and international human rights.

Thus clearly they have need of a good editor. It doesn’t look like someone’s getting paid by the word, so why not one “international” instead of five?

Although with them being so concerned about “international” It Only Makes Sense their Staff page shows a “UN Liaison”. Why wouldn’t it makes sense to have someone be designated the UN Liaison, since obviously they must do a lot of communicating with the UN, on higher-level matters than, say, an ordinary journalist or run-of-the-mill “advocacy center”, and the UN is always grateful to have an official UN Liaison to correspond with.

Well, they do have an “Arctic Military Strategist” listed, so obviously the UN wants to have an official UN Liaison when requesting their opinion on military matters. The page says he “…is one of a handful of Arctic subject matter experts in uniform today.” As is well known, all military organizations throughout the world are always happy to have active duty personnel give their free and honest (informed) opinions to any non-governmental organization of any sort. I’m certain his information gleaned from the classified material at his disposal has been very helpful.

Yup, great startup organization. They’ll do fine, despite Google being likely to find the Arctic Institute of North America instead, just like with their previously-mentioned “Climate Institute” at their Washington DC address, Google will find The Climate Institute of Washington DC instead… Is “Arctic Climate Institute” available as a name for them?

So the Arctic Institue is a sham? Yet another muppet on the trail of the CAGW swindle, probably vying for some grants from gullible government departments desperately ‘soaking’ up all the support they can?
Pathetic…….glad you outed the bar steward.

just thought I’d look at the staff page of their website – WTF???
How many honours ‘science’ degrees do you see amongst the staff?
How many are BA degrees in political studies or european studies? OMFG!
I want to know when, where, how and why this group exists.
I want to know who funds them and why – I presume it was via some government grants? I see no mention of funding during a brief perusal of their website!
Are they simply a paid advocacy group? a bunch of creamers, skimming off as much of the grant money as possible?

Anthony Watts says:
March 5, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Here’s my story on sock puppetry and ethics
————————————————————————————————————
Perhaps a good title for this story is, “Mr. Humpert gets his Gleick trainer kit.”
I pointed out in a comment that the case of Gleick was important as it was a microcosm of climate science as revealed in the FOIA e-mail release. I did not expect additional examples so soon.

How many more times? Any apology with a qualification is not an apology.

Why you did it, whether for a noble purpose or not, is not an issue. If you are wrong, admit it and apologise wholeheartedly and generously – that’s it.

Anything else is selfserving twaddle.

In my long life, I have on occasion been in a meeting where I have forgotten to do something which I had undertaken to do. On the few occasions when this has happened, I have immediately held up my hand, admitted my error, apologised, and assured the meeting that it would be done immediately after the meeting concluded. I have never ever been chastised or insulted for this approach.

Smokey, first off I’m talking about the sea ice cover, so let’s stick to that topic for now. Second, if you want references, you can start with Kay et al. 2011 (GRL) in regards to natural variability not being enough to explain the current decline in Arctic sea ice cover. There are more references in there. You can also search papers by Kattsov (such as his 2010 paper), papers by Winton (such as his 2011 paper) and more references in those papers on attribution studies.

I am currently comparing the observations to the CMIP5 model output, and there again the null hypothesis is unsupported (working on finishing the paper now). What’s important to remember, any sea ice trend we find in the observations is influenced by both signal and noise components in the time-series. However, since the real world provides only ONE example of internal climate variability, it is not possible to separate out signal from noise in the observational sea ice record. On the other hand, several ensemble members from climate model simulations generate different realizations of internal climate variability, allowing us to separate out the signal (e.g. external forcing) from the noise (internal/natural climate variability). Since the noise is uncorrelated from one simulation to the next, averaging over many ensemble members reduces the noise level and improves estimates of any overall trend.

When I talk about the Arctic ice cover mostly being covered by perennial ice, I’m talking about the last 50 years of hemispheric observations. Just because you may have regional open water 100 years ago, that does not imply there was less ice Arctic-wide then than today. In addition, there are several studies that have given many different dates as to when there was significantly less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean during summers than today, ranging from 100,000s of years to 10,000s of years ago. But that in no way implies that there is not some external forcing responsible for what is happening today.

I think you don’t argue that the Arctic sea ice is in a period of decline, but that you believe it is 100% caused by natural climate variability. I argue that it is caused by a combination of natural and external forcing.

After seeing Steven Mosher’s excellent dissection of Gleick’s use of language, I found myself unable to avoid looking at your use of language.

Julienne Stroeve says March 5, 2012 at 12:53 pm:

…Given the positive AO throughout most of this winter, there was good export of multiyear ice out of Fram Strait, such that this winter there was a larger amount of 3+ year old ice exported than in the last 4 winters …

Why choose the adjective ‘good’ to describe the export of ice through the Fram Strait?

It can only be ‘good’ if it fits with a desired result. A dispassionate (ie scientific) adjective could have been ‘high’, ‘significant’ or ‘greater’.

Your choice of adjective leads me to believe that you are not a dispassionate observer.

Billy, if that’s all you have to complain about in what I wrote, I figure that’s a good thing. I could have said large amount, above normal amount, etc. in terms of the export, but the main part of the story is that there was more old ice exported out of Fram Strait this winter than the last few.

And as for “good”, I don’t think it’s a good thing if the Arctic loses it’s sea ice cover for many reasons.

I agree with Billy Liar. Words have meaning, and phrases like “separate out” grate. ‘Separate’ is sufficient and correct. Definitions are especially critical in scientific discussions. Too many times I read where people use “theory” when they mean hypothesis, or conjecture. All are a part of the process that is the scientific method. To be a hypothesis someting must be testable. CO2 causing ice loss in one hemisphere is not testable.

Next, you are constantly setting up strawman arguments, then knocking down your strawman and presuming you have won some sort of debate point. Let me corrrect that error with a couple of typical examples.

You wrote: “I think you don’t argue that the Arctic sea ice is in a period of decline, but that you believe it is 100% caused by natural climate variability.”

Wrong. Show me where I ever wrote that Arctic ice is not declining. I stated quite specifically that the Arctic ice decline is not in dispute. Where did you get your misinformation regarding what I wrote?

I also never stated that the decline “is caused 100% by natural climate variability.” That is another of your strawman arguments. What I wrote was: “Natural variability is entirely sufficient to account for all of the current changes in the Arctic. I did not say that there are no other factors at work. But that is conjecture, not verifiable, testable fact.”

When we compare the Arctic with the Antarctic, there appears to be no cause for alarm. There is also no testable, empirical evidence showing that the polar ice variability is caused by human CO2 emissions. That is simply a model based conjecture.

Finally, it appears that you still misunderstand the null hypothesis. If and when the parameters of the Holocene, including global temperature, precipitation, ice cover, etc., are exceeded, and if and when it can be shown, per the scientific method, that human activity is the reason those parameters are exceeded, then the null hypothesis will be falsified. But so far, the planet is well within the parameters of the Holocene. Nothing unprecedented is occurring. As Dr. Roy Spencer puts it: “No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.”

Smokey, you forgot that I said “I think you…” That implies that this is my understanding of what you have said, but not that it is 100% what you believe. When you say that natural variability is entirely sufficient to account for ALL the sea ice changes we are seeing, that to me implies that you think it is 100% caused by natural variability.

Just so that you are clear on what I believe, I believe that the current loss of the sea ice is caused by a combination of natural and forced climate variability.

You do seem to miss the point though that observations alone cannot separate out the signal from the noise.

I am curious how much weight you give to paleoclimate studies, and which paleoclimate data you trust and which you do not.

The “Arctic Institute” now appears to be going the comment censorship route. I posted a comment on their site asking why they referred to NSIDC graph as having a 30 year average when it only covered an average from 1979 to 2000. This comment went through. They had another page with an interactive graph of the last few years of ice area plotted against the average from 1979 to 2000. I submitted a comment asking why they used 1979 to 2000 when the data are available through 2012. This comment has vanished into the ether and both pages are now restricted to comments from “team members”.

I guess restricting comments to “team members” helps ensure that they don’t have to answer embarrassing questions. First time I’ve been kicked off a site, gives me a good old global warming glow.

Smokey, for testing the null hypothesis in the sea ice record, I am relying on climate model ensembles and testing the hypothesis H1 that the trend in any given model ensemble member (m) is consistent with the observed trend o. This is done for all months, as well as for individual months. Following Santer et al. [2008] an effective sample size (neff) is calculated in order to adjust the standard error (s(m) or s(o)) of the trend for the effects of temporal autocorrelation: neff = ntot(1-AR1)/(1-AR1)
where ntot is the number of years over which the trend is being evaluated and AR1 is the lag-1 temporal autocorrelation coefficient after the seasonal cycle is removed. The test statistic based on combining the standard error of both the model and the observation becomes the difference in the trends multiplied by the square root of the combined variances of the model ensemble and the observation.

“He demanded that I recant statements made within my post and apologize, and if I did not take these actions before a specified time, he would reveal my address or other personal details online, threatening to put my “personal life at risk”. I continue to stand by the assertions I made in my post, but I do understand that people may disagree with my conclusions.”

—————–

Maybe they deserve a thorough factual right up, less they turn this into ‘sceptics’ threatening them in the media.

Oh gosh this is too funny. Great legwork Anthony and mods. (Had flashes of Lisbeth Salander while reading the detective work. ☺)

Did anyone see any of the A.I. staff at any of the recent “occupy” events? Just wondering. You know, someone holding a placard claiming, Masters degrees in Ancient Asian Philosophy and Classical Sanskri Linguistics … and still can’t find work.

Thank you for providing the information, and especially thank you for taking the high road in the subsequent discussions. :)

There are a number of newspaper articles from the 20s that suggest that Ice cover was very low then. Your information only seems to cover the last 50 years, which IMO isn’t nearly long enough. Have there been attempts to reconstruct ice extent in the 20s, using what may be the only info we have from the time…the eyewitness accounts as presented in newspapers?

Models are great scientific tools…but IMO, they’re not science. If the arctic has had less ice in the last 100 years, then the models also need to be able to show that this low ice extent can be shown to be entirely natural, in order to help validate the models…has that been done?

You can tell the Arctic Institute folks were believers in the propaganda about skeptics. They really believed skeptics were a bunch of idiots and they could teach them a thing or two. I’m sure they were surprised to find themselves being kicked soundly in the butt.

It could very well be these kids were well meaning but have been influenced by all the propaganda. They may never have met a skeptic. They obviously haven’t a clue about climate but were off to save the world. Maybe a little reality will help, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Smokey, first off I’m talking about the sea ice cover, so let’s stick to that topic for now. Second, if you want references, you can start with Kay et al. 2011 (GRL) in regards to natural variability not being enough to explain the current decline in Arctic sea ice cover.

Did I fail to get the memo? When did 100% of the causes of natural variability get discovered?

He also in a second email begged me not to reveal any of the details of his street address, because as it turns out, he’s running the “Institute” out of his apartment!

Well Anthony his non-apology apology should be no surprise and I am sure he won’t lose any sleep over not being able to comment at WUWT. Andrew Breitbart had it right. To paraphrase, if they punch you in the face punch back twice as hard. Letting him off the hook may make you feel like you’re being a nice guy (and I think you probably are a nice guy) but is that the right thing to do?

I know what I would do. I would contact the building management and provide the facts that one of the tenants is operating a business out of their apartment. I would also provide the local code enforcer with the facts concerning Mr. Humpert’s likely violation of zoning laws. Not doing this, in my mind, is a slap in the face to all the people that do follow the rules. Allowing Mr. Humpert off the hook isn’t doing him any favors either. It is only encouraging him to continue down the same self destructive path.

REPLY: From what we can tell in our investigation, he’s not risen to a level of a business yet and hasn’t gotten any funding. It appears to just be some polysci kids and a web page hosted by Google’s free Blogger service. Like I said, the web facade and the reality are far different, so I don’t see any reason to follow your suggestions. If it were some successful outfit raking in the cash from Federal/State Grants or NGO’s, yes you’d have a point. As fish go, this isn’t even a minnow, more like a guppy embryo. -Anthony

RDCII, There have been some reconstructions, such as the sea ice data that forms the Had1SST data set that dates back before 1900. But prior to about 1953, there are gaps in the observations and the time-series has been filled in with climatology during those observational gaps. It’s also difficult to know what the ice is like Arctic-wide based on some regional observations. Just because ice may be low on the Eurasian side for example for a few years, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also low on the Canadian side and vice versa. Trying to extend the observational record remains an active research topic.

In the CMIP5 models, you do get a period in the 1930s-1940s with larger negative sea ice trends than at other times since 1900, except for the last decade, which shows the largest negative trends. So the models are picking up on less ice cover during the 1920s-1940s. Understanding what caused the warming and less ice cover during this time is indeed very important to our further understanding of the climate system.

“… for testing the null hypothesis in the sea ice record, I am relying on climate model ensembles…”

Well, there’s the problem right there. The null hypothesis uses empirical evidence; past data against which the current alternative hypothesis is tested. For example, how can a model replace ice core data? The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data. Note “observed”. That is the null.

It is evident that you have a somewhat peculiar understanding of the climate null hypothesis. In the first link below Anthony writes: “Currently the null hypothesis for climate change attribution research is that humans have no influence.” <— That is the null. AGW is the alternative hypothesis. Keep in mind that:

a) real world, testable evidence [not models] is necessary to show whether the climate is currently outside of the Holocene’s parameters, and

b) that human emissions are the cause. [Using the scientific method, of course; models are not evidence.]

So far, the null hypothesis has withstood every attempt to falsify it, but of course you should certainly try [no models, please, verifiable past and current data only]. Here are a few links to help you understand the null hypothesis:

You say “observations alone cannot separate out the signal from the noise.” But you still have not shown a testable, reproducible, verifiable AGW “signal”. If you could, we would know just what the climate sensitivity number is. Rather, you provide models. But models are not evidence. There are no empirically discernable differences between today’s climate that are outside the parameters of the Holocene.

Finally, per your question: I give weight to empirical evidence such as ice core data, and long term raw temperature data such as the CET record. The following links may help you understand that today’s global temperatures are well within the parameters of the Holocene:

As we can see, we are currently in an ideal “Goldilocks” climate. There is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening now or on the horizon. Further, routine and abrupt temperature changes have happened naturally without regard to CO2 levels, which follow ΔT.

To claim that the planet has warmed from 288K to 288.8K is due to human activity over the past century and a half is fine, so long as you understand that it is simply a conjecture, not a testable hypothesis. The same applies to the natural variability in polar ice cover, which as I’ve shown has many natural precedents.

Smokey, there is more than one way to evaluate whether the trends we are seeing in the observations can be explained in part by external forcing. You are only looking at one point of view, that of the fact that in the past the climate has been warmer than today, so therefore you conclude that there is no way that today’s climate is being influenced by an external component. That in no way falsifies that external forcing is contributing to today’s warming. There are many factors that explain past climate variability, first and foremost the Earth’s position relative to the sun. I don’t fully understand why you don’t grasp that observations are only one realization of our climate system and they contain trend and noise and thus you cannot separate out the trend from the noise in such a short observational record (speaking of the last 100 years of modern data collection). There are so many papers coming out right now on updated paleoclimate evidence of Holocene climate variations, causes behind those, etc. that it’s not easy to keep up. A recent paper you may find interesting is the Menviel and Joos 2012 paper, that discusses CO2 variations during the Holocene and factors responsible for the variations.

Studies have shown that CO2 absorbs thermal infrared radiation and causes warming. We have more CO2 in the atmosphere today than at any other time during the Holocene. In fact that is true during the last 40,000 years based on ice core data from Antarctica (see the Ahn et al. 2004 paper).

We will disagree on the usefulness of climate models to characterize natural climate variability, which is fine. But I would encourage you to read some of the papers I pointed you to.

You keep telling me to read certain papers you reference, but you don’t provide hotlinks. That would be helpful.

And you could not possibly have had the time to read the articles and comments explaining the null hypothesis that I linked for you, between the time you read my comment and composed your response. So it appears that your mind is made up.

That’s a shame, because understanding the null hypothesis is central to the AGW debate. Since it has never been falsified, that means there is no testable evidence proving that AGW is any kind of a problem, if it exists at all. AGW is still a conjecture — the first step in the scientific method, to be sure, but inadequate for drawing conclusions that would greatly impact civilization.

As I’ve stated many times here and elsewhere, my own view is that 2xCO2 will result in ≈1°C warming, ± ≈0.5°C. But I could well be estimating too high. Dr. Miskolczi gives the climate sensitivity number of 0.0°C for 2xCO2, and he knows more about the subject than I do. The three Drs. Idso estimate less than 0.5°C, as do Dr. Spencer and others. Based on the current lack of testable evidence, any of these could be correct. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the presumed positive feedbacks are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. That is what the planet is telling us. And there is no empirical evidence supporting the IPCC’s fantastically high guesstimates of 3°C or more.

Someone upthread suggested that you write an article for WUWT. I concur. You would receive a lot of exposure for your ideas, and most importantly it would be worthwhile to see if the CO2 = declining Arctic sea ice conjecture is any more than an opinion, or if it would be falsified. Or maybe expire due to lack of any real supporting evidence, which appears to be its current fate.

When you check out the staff page and discover other strange entities like: climatecaucus.net
it just reminds me of the Monty Python skit about the numerous forms of the ‘People’s Liberation Front of Judea’ .

It seems that the climatecaucus.net group is a nearly fictitious group as well!

But you gotta love Malte being a representative to a ‘simulated conference’.

Thank you for providing the information, and especially thank you for taking the high road in the subsequent discussions. :) There are a number of newspaper articles from the 20s that suggest that Ice cover was very low then. Your information only seems to cover the last 50 years, which IMO isn’t nearly long enough. Have there been attempts to reconstruct ice extent in the 20s, using what may be the only info we have from the time…the eyewitness accounts as presented in newspapers?

Yes but as I have pointed out here before the articles cover the Atlantic side, meanwhile on the Pacific side the ice extent was very high. Read those newspaper articles as well!
For example:
“In 1921, Stefansson sent five settlers (the Canadian Allan Crawford, three Americans: Fred Maurer, Lorne Knight and Milton Galle, and Eskimo seamstress and cook Ada Blackjack) to the island in a speculative attempt to claim it for Canada.[21] The explorers were handpicked by Stefansson based upon their previous experience and academic credentials. Stefansson considered those with advanced knowledge in the fields of geography and science for this expedition. At the time, Stefansson claimed that his purpose was to head off a possible Japanese claim.[22] An attempt to relieve this group in 1922 failed when the schooner Teddy Bear under Captain Joe Bernard became stuck in the ice [23]. In 1923, the sole survivor of the Wrangel Island expedition, Ada Blackjack, was rescued by a ship that left another party of 13 (American Charles Wells and 12 Inuit).”

“In 1926, a team of Soviet explorers, equipped with three years of supplies, landed on Wrangel Island. Clear waters that facilitated the 1926 landing were followed by years of continuous heavy ice surrounding the island. Attempts to reach the island by sea failed and it was feared that the team would not survive their fourth winter.[27]
In 1929, the icebreaker Fyodor Litke was chosen for a rescue operation. It sailed from Sevastopol, commanded by captain Konstantin Dublitsky. On July 4, it reached Vladivostok where all Black Sea sailors were replaced by local crew members. Ten days later Litke sailed north; it passed Bering Strait, and tried to pass De Long Strait and approach the island from south. On August 8 a scout plane reported impassable ice in the strait, and Litke turned north, heading to Herald Island. It failed to escape mounting ice; August 12 the captain shut down the engines to save coal and had to wait two weeks until the ice pressure eased. Making a few hundred meters a day, Litke reached the settlement August 28. On September 5, Litke turned back, taking all the ‘islanders’ to safety. This operation earned Litke the order of the Red Banner of Labour (January 20, 1930), as well as commemorative badges for the crew.”

I have a problem keeping a consistent “identity” on the net. It used to be I was papertiger, but then they had an open registration day at Hot Air.
Someone had already taken “papertiger” as their nickname at that domain. No problem, I’ll just be French language “papiertigre” at Hot Air. It’s not as if they care about my consistency.

Somehow, not from my doing, this name change has migrated to WUWT. Although I am a big fan WUWT is chock full of my brand of bs (done better and more frequent than I am able) , so I figure why futz with the name when I don’t need to comment here that much, it might disrupt the other place?

Now we are talking about three identities, the two flavors of “tiger” and my real name, Jimmy D Mayeau.
No skulduggery or intention. It’s just the way things shook out.

You keep telling me to read certain papers you reference, but you don’t provide hotlinks. That would be helpful.

And you could not possibly have had the time to read the articles and comments explaining the null hypothesis that I linked for you, between the time you read my comment and composed your response. So it appears that your mind is made up.

That’s a shame, because understanding the null hypothesis is central to the AGW debate.

Note that she says:
“Smokey, for testing the null hypothesis in the sea ice record, I am relying on climate model ensembles and testing the hypothesis H1 that the trend in any given model ensemble member (m) is consistent with the observed trend o. ”

This has the cart WAAAYY before the horse. You don’t get to do “consistency” tests on H1 until you have first established the non-consistency of observations with H0. Until then, all Hx are moot.

Anyone who looks at a chart like this, and then claims that at times during the Holocene polar ice cover was not naturally less than curent ice cover has an agenda that has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with keeping the grant gravy train rolling.

I noted in my link upthread a newspaper clipping that reported the observations of an expedition by airborne dirigible, which covered a very large area including the North Pole, reporting expanses of open water throughout its travels. But of course, the alarmist narrative must be kept alive for pecuniary reasons, so a rescue operation in a limited region is described instead, as if that supports the wild-eyed notion that this is the first time the Arctic has lost sea ice.

For voluminous and well researched first hand observations of the ebb and flow of sea ice extent, see Tony Brown’s WUWT articles. The current Arctic ice decline is normal and cyclical. It has occurred repeatedly, and as we know, those who claim “this time it’s different” are invariably wrong.

Occam’s Razor warns against adding extraneous variables to any explanation unless they are essential to the explanation; the simplest explanation is almost always the correct explanation. Thus, there is no need to clutter up the simple explanation of natural regional climate cycles with the unnecessary, extraneous conjecture of a harmless and beneficial trace gas being added to the explanation. The primary purpose of that evidence-free claim is to keep the $Billions in annual grant money flowing, not the advancement of scientific truth — which as we’ve seen is in pretty short supply among the climate alarmist crowd.

Julienne= “it is not possible to separate out signal from noise in the observational sea ice record”

You should have just stopped there, I think we can all agree on that statement. The problem is that you seem to think that everything you wrote after that regarding models runs not only means something, but that it means MORE than the (self-admitted!) fact that your theory cannot be proven from observational data.

“There are many factors that explain past climate variability, first and foremost the Earth’s position relative to the sun. I don’t fully understand why you don’t grasp that observations are only one realization of our climate system and they contain trend and noise and thus you cannot separate out the trend from the noise in such a short observational record”

If there are many factors that explain past climate variability, why cannot they (be used to) model it well enough to get us to where we are today? But only if you have included all the significant factors and know the state of the climate well enough at some point in time.

What you refer to as “noise” are DATA. Noise is that component of the signal that is not related to the quantity being measured. i.e. an error in measuring a quantity. Noise will be part of the data; hopefully a very small component.

A “trend” is purely synthetic. It’s not real. It doesn’t tell you anything and has no predictive value in itself.

Might it be helpful for contextualisation to try to get people generally to describe the ice anomaly in terms of percentage of total ice area, whether for a given Polar region or Globally?

Based on just eyeballing the NSIDC Arctic Extent graph, present Arctic Ice extent is about 15m Sq Km. The 30 year average for this time of the year is about 15.8m Sq Km. In other words present Arctic Ice extent is about 95% of long term average.

Saying that there is a diminution of coverage of 726,000 Sq Km, an area the size of Texas (shock, horror, groans of dismay), is the classic Warmist way of dramatising an essentially insignificant deviation from long term average coverage.

I assume, since it is based in Washington, that the “Climate Institute” is either government funded or funded by lobbyists deeply embedded in government or, from experience both.

Regretably I do not find it in the least surprising to find that supporters of big government ecofascism masquerading as members of the public turn out not only to be false fronts but government funded lying propaganmdists too.

It has repeatedly been demonstrated that the “environmentalists” cannot name a single “scientist” anywhere in the world who supports warming catastrophism who is not ultimately paid to say it by the state. Nor a single prominent activist.

I have recently been asking if there is a single online commenter or newspaper letter writer not si8milarly funded and so far have found none.

Never mind the suckpuppets. The secret Trenberth Ocean Heat Reserve has been conveying heat such that it melts ice in the Arctic and reforms the ice in the Antarctic. I don’t know what it means but it is almost certainly indicative of something very, very bad for the planet — and proves the models right without even being predicted!! That’s how significant it is.

And Arctic ice cover may be within one standard deviation of recent averages but it is still a significant drop. Of course surface temps are trending cool, barely within 1 standard deviation of the IPCC model mean but that is NOT a significant departure from the prediction. I get it!

And this just in! I just received this memo from an unnamed insider:

Of course there is confusion! It’s a travesty that we have not come up with larger arbitrary negative forcing values for unspecified aerosols that would make the models work and reduce the need for hidden ocean heat reserves. Of course it would also make it harder to justify blaming all recent tornadoes etc on the warming if the warming has not yet occurred because of the aerosols but we have endured larger ambiguities and contradictions…

Sorry Smokey, I don’t know how to put in hotlinks here, which is why I give you references instead. A quick google search on the papers I mentioned earlier will allow you to find them easily. And I have read your null-hypothesis arguments in the past.

If you don’t know how to hotlink, then you’ve done it by accident. Just copy & paste the URL address into the comment box with a space before and after. That’s quite basic. I’m surprised an academic wouldn’t know how to do it. But then there’s Phil Jones and Excel…

Now that you’ve read the explanation of how the null hypothesis works, I trust that you understand how central it is to the AGW debate. If you’re still unsure, read the links and comments I provided above. It will take a couple of hours of your time, but without a good understanding you will go on believing in the “carbon”-caused runaway global warming nonsense.

The fact is that there is no discernible difference between the rising global temperature trend line of pre-industrial CO2 levels since the LIA, and post-industrial CO2 levels. Do you understand? There is no difference in the trend. That’s where the null hypothesis comes in: if there is no measurable difference in the rising temperature trend line, then CO2=CAGW is an evidence-free conjecture. What is being proclaimed as “AGW” is simply the planet’s steady emergence from the LIA — one of the coldest episodes of the Holocene. Rising CO2 has caused no accelerated warming — another widely-cited prediction that has been shown to be wrong.

Next, regarding the “signal to noise’ tap dancing in your linked papers by Santer, those model-based conjectures are just Santer’s backing and filling, because they have been decisively falsified by McKitrick et al.’s 2010 paper here:

Note that verifiable empirical data was used by McKitrick, whereas computer models runs were used by Santer et al. Observational data shows conclusively that the widely predicted “fingerprint of global warming”, the tropospheric hotspot, is missing.

When such major predictions are proven wrong by real world, testable data, honest scientists must question their AGW premise. Why is that not happening within the alarmist subset of climate activist scientists?

Smokey, I know how to copy and paste a URL, you don’t need to be insulting as it really does you no good in an exchange of ideas. What I don’t know how to do, is to add a link to a word as you do in your postings via comment posting, and it’s not something I’m going to spend time figuring out. Note that your link on McKitrick’s paper directly points to a figure that shows models versus observations, so you are incorrect that McKitrick’s paper deals with observations and that Santer’s doesn’t. They are both comparing modeled trends to the observed trends. Further note that Santer et al. 2008 showed how Douglass needed to account for autocorrelation in computing the error of the trend as well as the test statistic used to decide whether or not the model trends were statistically different from the observations. McKitrick’s paper argues that using a more up-to-date time-series than used in the Santer et al. (2008) paper shows the models to have different temperature trends than the observations. Yet Santer’s 2011 paper does use data through 2010. I get the feeling you have not read any of Santer’s papers, nor the McKitrick paper. Here’s McKitrick’s paper so that you can read it: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl.290/pdf

Apologies, I read your post as saying you didn’t know how to hotlink a source, as you can see from my opening sentences.

My point — which I thought everyone would understand — is that the models are wrong. They can’t predict their way out of a wet paper bag. Any claim that a particular model is accurate is based on the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: shoot a hole in a barn door, paint a bulleye around it, and claim perfect accuracy. But no model is accurate for any extended time period.

McKitrick shows the models were off by as much as 400%. That is a major fail. There is no tropospheric hotspot as was widely predicted.

The fact that the warming trend line since the LIA remains unchanged [there is no accelerated warming as was universally predicted by the alarmist crowd, as shown by the green trend line] is solid evidence that CO2 does not have the predicted effect. The long term trend line since the LIA is unchanged, and remains within specific parameters. If Co2 had the claimed effect on temperature, we would certainly see it reflected in the [natural] warming trend from the LIA. But it is not there.

So again I ask:

When such major predictions are proven wrong by real world, testable data, honest scientists must question their AGW premise. Why is that not happening within the alarmist subset of activist climate scientists?

Apparently Malte Humpert has launched a DCMA complaint (for using his photo from his Arctic Institute staff page, clearly fair use) against The Daily Bayonet while at the same time changing the URL’s to break links in any stories referencing him.

Looks like he’s doing everything possible to prevent people from seeing him,
or something.

I smell the Streisand effect coming. Malte, you are making yourself into a news item, just fess up and admit you sock-puppeted here and you are running the Arctic Institute out of your apartment. The more you keep trying to obfuscate, the more people will see you as a shyster.

“The moderation staff…..unearthed quite a bit of material that Anthony has discreetly not made public.”

If I was the Miscreant in question, I might have reason to fear that the “Material” Anthony is treating with “discretion” is related to Tax Law, and Tax Exempt / Non-profit er, ‘protocols’. Or I might not. I would not want to be vulnerable along those lines.

“When such major predictions are proven wrong by real world, testable data, honest scientists must question their AGW premise. Why is that not happening within the alarmist subset of climate activist scientists?”

Why is that not happening? “The Sow must go on”! (Cue the Music, Sing it Ethel(?)!) “There’s No business like Show Business, like no business I know , Everything about it is appealing,
Everything the traffic will allow . . . . .”